NASA announced Friday that it will award $212.5 million to Louisville-based Sierra Nevada Space Systems to continue work on the company's Dream Chaser space vehicle, which is being developed with the initial aim of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

The funding round should lead to immediate hiring by the company, including at its headquarters in the Colorado Technology Center in Louisville.

"We'll be starting within days to enhance employment," Sierra Nevada Space Systems head Mark Sirangelo said, without offering specifics.

NASA awarded a total of $1.1 billion Friday to companies developing spacecraft that will once again fly American astronauts into space. Boeing received $460 million and Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX received $440 million.

NASA's space shuttle program was retired last year after 30 years and, without a commercial space effort to replace it, the United States will have to rely on the Russian Soyuz space capsule at $63 million a seat to get astronauts in and out of space.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden hailed the step his agency took Friday as a major initiative toward rejuvenating manned space travel by the United States.

"Today, we are announcing another critical step toward launching our astronauts from U.S. soil on space systems built by American companies," Bolden said in a news release. "We have selected three companies that will help keep us on track to end the outsourcing of human spaceflight."

Orbital flight in 2016?

SpaceX made headlines earlier this year when it became the first commercial venture to send a capsule -- albeit cargo-only -- to the International Space Station and return it successfully to Earth. Boeing is working on a seven-person space capsule.

But Sirangelo, on a conference call with reporters Friday, said the seven-person vehicle that Sierra Nevada is developing is the only one in the commercial space industry that would be capable of landing on a runway upon its return to Earth.

Louisville-based Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft during a captive-carry test performed in May at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield. (7News Denver)

The Dream Chaser is a 40-foot-long and 25-foot-wide spacecraft that resembles a smaller version of the space shuttle. The competing vehicles under development are capsules.

And Dream Chaser will launch on the Atlas V rocket, which has been successfully used dozens of times, Sirangelo said. He hopes the company can make its first orbital test flight in 2016.

"It's a very strong validation of the concept we have with the Dream Chaser, which is a lifting-body concept," he said of NASA's decision to fund the company further. "NASA is seeking diversity in launch system and in vehicle."

Paul Guthrie, senior economist at space industry consulting firm The Tauri Group in Alexandria, Va., said the award Sierra Nevada got Friday "is a pretty significant chunk of money compared to what they've invested in the vehicle."

Sierra Nevada has scored $125 million in two previous NASA funding rounds and has, as a company, put in a little more than half that amount toward the Dream Chaser, Sirangelo said.

"This is certainly a huge enabler," Guthrie said. "And part of their promise is that they seek to do more with the money than has been done to this point in the space industry."

Guthrie said the Dream Chaser has certain advantages of flexibility, given its ability to land on any conventional runway and be quickly turned around for its next flight.

Sirangelo said the fact that Boeing and SpaceX each got more than double the funding from NASA than Sierra Nevada did is irrelevant, because each company is on its own development trajectory with different milestones behind and ahead.

He said Dream Chaser started out years ago as a NASA project -- the HL-20 -- that has been in Sierra Nevada's hands since 2004. That relationship, he said, removes a lot of the uncertainty in design and development that might still be present with other spacecraft concepts.

"We have a fairly mature design that has close to 15 to 20 years of work in it," Sirangelo said. "And we're sitting on a rocket that has flown more than 30 times."

Local impacts will be felt

Sirangelo said the money from NASA will allow Sierra Nevada to immediately start hiring dozens of people, a number that could mushroom to hundreds of new hires over the next few years.

The company has 250 employees in Louisville.

He said there are many people who were put on "contingent hire" who will now get a phone call from the company telling them they are part of the Sierra Nevada family.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennett congratulated the company in a prepared statement Friday.

"Sierra Nevada and its team represents the best of Colorado's leading aerospace industry -- demonstrating not only our state's capacity for innovation but also serving as part of the foundation for strong and vibrant 21st century economy in this country," Bennett said. "This will also be a catalyst for Colorado kids' interest in studying science, technology, engineering, and math so that they can be part of this next generation of space travel."

Sierra Nevada will now ready the Dream Chaser for autonomous approach and landing tests at Edwards Air Force Base in California later this year. The spacecraft successfully passed a captive-carry test at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield in May.

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